This post by Matt Milosavljevic titled What I Learnt at Startup Camp supports my thesis that human factors are a huge make-or-break factor in startups, bands, and other creative entities. He puts it rather nicely:

People, in my opinion, are the key differentiators between the success and failure of pretty much any startup. It’s true that lady luck can make several cameos during the course of an act, but really it’s the cast that will makes or breaks the show.

Well said. I like his Venn diagram about the degree of “overlap” between people. I’m inclined to agree.

Headline today: “Gloves Are Coming Off In Campaign.” I’ve seen so many headlines this campaign that say that Obama and/or McCain have taken the gloves off, should take the gloves off or will take the gloves off. I have to wonder how many pairs of gloves they started with. And you never see mention of them putting the gloves back on.

I was a musician before I was a psychologist — low on the food chain and too much of a generalist (ahem, dilettante) to compete at a satisfying level in either the hard-core classical world or the jazz/ studio world.

I got to play in garage bands, jazz ensembles large and small, orchestras, chamber groups, new-music ensembles, early-music ensembles, theatre orchestras and a bunch of ad-hoc groups and gigs. They all had one thing in common. When they were going well, it felt unbelievably great. But every group could devolve at any time into sheer misery, a big soul-destroying bowl of suck. Read more »

At several different points in this process, Mark has surprised me by just stating at what phase we were. “OK, we’ve mapped out your business ecosystem.” “We’re in the middle of project planning.” “We’re ready to begin the execution phase”.

Each time this would come as a surprise. “Wait, we are?” But it would help me snap to an understanding of what we were doing and why. It’s been simple and powerful and extremely valuable. It is the antidote to my susceptibility to getting sidetracked and lost in the details.

It’s like suddenly finding a map with a “you are here” dot on it. Everything becomes clear and action becomes obvious and inevitable. It’s a small input with a disproportionately large effect.

One of the great enduring clichés about psychoanalysis and deep psychotherapy is that it’s all about delving deeply into the past. It is true that we’re really interested in the totality of experiences that make a person the person they are, including early development and family relationships.

But a thing that happens when we meet several times a week, as we do in psychoanalysis, is that we get closer and closer to the present moment. What a delicious paradox.

Here’s how it works: when a person comes in for the first time, they have to tell all about who they are and where it hurts, where they’ve come from and want they want. After a while when we’re used to one another, it becomes more about how it’s going this week or today, plus all of the connections we make with their experiences in the past. They might start to find their feelings are not as mysterious, and they might begin to feel better. Read more »